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Highlights
These pages feature a selection
of past projects. Click on a link to find out more.
Families
Family Music Days,
April 2007
On a sunny weekend in April,
West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge and St Andrew's Hall in Norwich rocked
with the sounds of children joining Britten Sinfonia's Carnival-themed
Family Days. Families spent the morning dashing from workshops to concerts,
and by lunchtime most children were clutching amazing instruments constructed
from cardboard tubes and willow twigs and sporting brightly painted faces.
In the afternoon, families
joined workshop leader Simon Gunton and Britten Sinfonia musicians to
create their very own carnival pieces, which they then performed as part
of the fantastic Carnival Finale.
One happy family contacted
after the event to let us know about their experience:
"We all came to your family
music day and had the best of fun. Our seven-year-old fancies himself
as a professional drummer so was thrilled when he was put into the drumming
group to bash out some groovy rhythms. The six-year-old prefers tunes
that are easier on the ear, and after the string demonstration in the
morning has decided that the viola is for her.... And the youngest just
likes making a noise and is a bit of an exhibitionist, so was entirely
in her element on stage during the carnival at the end.
Their doting parents were thrilled
that the day provided such a stimulating, inspiring and enjoyable musical
experience and are hugely grateful to Britten Sinfonia for making it all
possible."
To see some photographs from
this year's events, click
here - more will be added soon! To make sure you're among the
first to receive information about next year's Family Music Days, sign
up to receive our eBulletin here.
Schools
Music Across the Ocean
2007
Britten Sinfonia's first ever
international Creative Learning projects took place as part of our tour
to South America in May 2007. 40 children from schools in Buenos Aires
joined our musicians to learn more about Music Across the Ocean in a workshop
drawing on traditional music from Argentina and the British Isles. And
in Sao Paulo, four Britten Sinfonia players held masterclasses for talented
young string players at the Tom Jobim School of Music. To find out
more about these projects, and see pictures, visit our South
America blog.
To celebrate the tour, we also
devised a special interactive musical game, to help you brush up on your
Spanish and Portuguese! Click
here to play...
Instrumental Coaching
2006 - 2007
Demonstrating a new commitment
towards providing the opportunity for student and community ensembles
to have access to the artistic skills and knowledge of Britten Sinfonia
musicians, regular coaching sessions for student ensembles have been taking
place at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge. This year, Britten
Sinfonia violinist Miranda Dale and horn players Steve Bell and Steve
Stirling have been working with chamber groups on Hills Road's Instrumental
Awards scheme and, as anyone attending the Music Department's concert
in March will confirm, the students' hard resulted in wonderful performances
by all concerned!
Kaleidoscopes 2006
As part of Britten Sinfonia's
world premiere tour of John Tavener's Kaleidoscopes, we spent time with
two special schools in Cambridge: Castle and Granta. Working with Cambridge
Music Festival and Norfolk Dance, our brief was to explore rhythmic impulses
in music and how they can be interpreted through movement. The theme of
Kaleidoscopes provided an inspiring visual context for the dances, with
the children creating swooping lines and mirror images. As workshop leader
Julian West reflected after the project, "the
arts give an
outlet to many of the best things within us - our creativity, our ability
to work together and appreciate each other, and a way to communicate that
doesn't necessarily rely on speech".
Starting Out in Norwich
2006
Working with children from seven
schools in West Norwich , animateurs Julian West and John Webb along with
Britten Sinfonia musicians, led storytelling and music and movement workshops.
The central theme was of St Andrew's Hall in Norwich, with pupils from
each school devising the lyrics, vocal line and percussion interludes
to their own school song, celebrating one aspect of the hall's history.
This was performed in front of staff, families and their peers at St Andrew's
Hall on 9 March 2006 . Britten Sinfonia musicians included Bridget Carey
(viola), Stuart King (clarinet), Richard Steggall (horn) and Riccardo
Bonci (organ). Well done to all involved for your fantastic singing and
percussion playing!
Bury St Edmunds Festival
- Encore 2006
The last three years have seen
a close partnership between Britten Sinfonia, the Bury St Edmunds Festival
and schools in Bury. In the most recent project, eight violin pupils from
King Edward VI High School had the opportunity to meet principal second
violin, Miranda Dale, in a day session focusing on an interactive deconstruction
of the George Newson Concerto for Two Violins. The session involved a
discourse of the structure, group score reading, and playing through excerpts
from the work. The participants also had a chance to discover, through
dialogue with Miranda, what it is like to be a professional musician and
soloist, as well as performing and learning in a masterclass environment.
Linked to Bury St Edmund Festival,
the project also enabled the students and their peers to attend the UK
premiere of the concerto at the Britten Sinfonia concert, held at the
Bury St Edmunds Cathedral on 24 May, as well as the chance to meet Pekka
Kuusisto, violin soloist, for a fascinating question and answer session.
Supported by Encore.
Students
Composers' Workshop
2008
Our annual Cambridge University
Composers' Workshop once again provided an absorbing insight into the
compositional process, as some of Cambridge's most talented young composers
had their music workshopped by Britten Sinfonia musicians and conductor
/ composer James MacMillan.
The workshop kicked off with
Julian Revie's Impulse, a frenetic exploration of rhythmic and
harmonic motifs, pushing at the limits of instrumental ranges and techniques.
This was followed by Oliver Rudland's The White Devil, written
originally as an overture to a play and retaining a strong filmic quality.
Peter Matthew's Chamber Prelude was next, bringing a more Romantic
sound world with moments of great beauty in the instrumental writing.
After a break for lunch, we heard James Keay's A Song - ironically
titled because, as James explained, the music was often the antithesis
of cantabile writing, making clever use of poet William Blake's
ideas of horizontal and vertical motion. And finally came Daniel Rollison's
Octet, a fugal piece with echoes of Hindemith and Bartok.
These five very different pieces
demonstrated that we have much to look forward to from these young composers.
And the composers themselves found the process to be invaluable:
"Thank you! I cannot overstate
how valuable this is for us - really tremendous!"
Those who missed the workshop
will be able to hear extracts from all of the pieces, as well as interviews
with the composers, on our next SinfoniaCast,
out in late February.
Community
Vital Communities 2007
Britten Sinfonia was delighted to work with Cambridgeshire County Council and Orchestras Live on its pioneering Vital Communities project over the summer. Britten Sinfonia musicians toured six communities in Cambridgeshire- Wisbech, Ramsey, Peterborough, Trumpington, Sutton and Fulbourn- to bring high quality performances to family audiences in local community venues.
Paul Archibald (trumpet) Douglas Coleman (trombone) and Daniel Becker (piano) played repertoire which included Per Nørgård's It's All His Fancy,That, a piece based on stories from Alice in Wonderland, and joined in with a Mad Hatter's tea party afterwards! Audience members were delighted by the opportunity to see Britten Sinfonia close to home:
"Terrific range of music from toe-tapping old favourites to new adventures. Thank you." (Trumpington)
"A wonderful opportunity for an intimate setting, superb acoustics and beautiful music. A marvellous combination. Can we look forward to more please?" (Peterborough )
"Perfect! My family will remember it for a long time." (Sutton)
To find out more about Vital Communities, visit the Cambridgeshire website.
Cambridge Holiday Orchestra
2007
For three days in rainy August,
Britten Sinfonia had the chance to work with budding musicians in the
Cambridge Holiday Orchestra . This week long course gave
young musicians of any level (beginner to advanced) a chance to take part
in musical activities at West Road Concert Hall. Highlights of the course
included Discovery Workshops where children could find out about "Endangered
Species" instruments in the orchestra, listening to performances
by three Britten Sinfonia musicians, Emma Feilding (oboe) Douglas
Coleman (trombone) and Lucy Shaw (bass). In a noisy conclusion to the
sessions, they also got to try out some of the instruments for themselves.
Russell Keable, director of the Holiday Orchestra praised the enthusiasm
of our musicians:
"The feedback from our course
continues to be tremendously positive. Much of this is down to the added
dynamism of having your team of fine musicians in our midst for part of
the week. The three players were so positive, professional and willing
to enter into the spirit of the event."
The week culminated in a hugely
successful lunchtime concert, enjoyed by over 200 people.
Chesterton Community
Celebration 2006
This project culminated in an
Open Day at Brown's Field, the new Cambridge City Council Community Centre
in East Chesterton, on Saturday 18 March 2006 . Six full-day art and music
workshops were held in early March involving pupils from Shirley Infant
School and St Andrew's Primary in Chesterton, Cambridge , and centered
on the theme of insects and nature. Large-scale bugs were constructed
during the process for display at Brown's Field, and the musical material
from the sessions was woven into a complementary sound installation. Well
done to all the participants for creating such wonderful music and fantastic,
colourful bugs!
Art sessions on the Open Day
involved the making of mini-bugs and beasties, with participants conducting
Britten Sinfonia musicians with their mini-bugs to create improvised bug
music in the music sessions. This project was facilitated by Jason Rowland
in conjunction with visual artist, Claire Simpson, and supported by Britten
Sinfonia musicians Clare Finnimore (viola) and Ben Russell (double bass).
Endangered
Species 2005
The Association of British
Orchestras and Youth Music launched a UK-wide campaign to save certain
instruments from 'extinction' due to limited uptake by young people. The
bassoon, oboe, French horn and double bass are all suffering from lack
of 'street-cred' according to the report. In a bid to promote these instruments,
and prevent them from becoming 'endangered species' Youth Music provided
funding to enable five orchestras to activate interest in these instruments
among young people. Britten Sinfonia's main focus was on double reeds
- oboe and bassoon - and Principal Oboe Nicholas Daniel was an Ambassador
for the campaign. A series of workshops from January to July 2005 were
held for both teachers and young people in Essex .
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